TEILHARD DE WHO?: MORE ODYSSEY WITH CLARKE AND CHARDIN

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ: 1 May 1881–10 April 1955, was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist, and took part in the discovery of the Peking Man. He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving).

Although many of Teilhard’s writings were at one time censored by his Catholic Church, in our time he has been posthumously praised by popes. However, some evolutionary biologists are still negative. Nevertheless, Chardin has had a profound influence on the New Age movement, being described as “perhaps the man most responsible for the spiritualization of evolution in a global and cosmic context”–even being described as a “visionary” philosopher and a contemporary “truth-sayer” or “prophet.” Teilhard de Chardin has two comprehensive works, The Phenomenon of Man, and The Divine Milieu.

(Teilhard is mentioned by name and the Omega Point briefly explained in Arthur C. Clarke’s and Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other Days. The title of the short-story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor is a reference to Teilhard’s work. The American novelist Don DeLillo’s 2010 novel Point Omega borrows its title and some of its ideas from Teilhard de Chardin. Robert Wright, in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, compares his own naturalistic thesis that biological and cultural evolution are directional and, possibly, purposeful, with Teilhard’s ideas.) [Wikipedia]

“The perception of the divine omnipresence is essentially a seeing, a taste, that is to say a sort of intuition bearing upon certain superior qualities in things. It cannot, therefore, be attained directly by any process of reasoning, nor by any human artifice. It is a gift, like life itself, of which it is undoubtedly the supreme experimental perfection.” (The Divine Milieu, p. 131.)

“When a distinguished but elderly statesman states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” –Arthur C, Clarke

“Mystics seem intent in regarding the death of earth as the birth of the new cosmic man. In this respect, Teilhard de Chardin’s vision is remarkably like A. C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End”: ‘Let us suppose from this universal centre, this Omega Point, there constantly emanate radiations hitherto only perceptible to those persons we call “mystics.” Let us further imagine that, as the sensibility or response to mysticism of the human race increases with planetisation, the awareness of Omega becomes so widespread as to warm the earth psychically while physically it is growing cold. Is it not conceivable that Mankind, at the end of its totalisation, its folding-in upon itself, may reach a critical level of maturity where, leaving the earth and stars to lapse slowly back into the dwindling mass of primordial energy, it will detach itself from this planet and join the one true, irreversible essence of things, the Omega Point? A phenomenon perhaps outwardly akin to death; but in reality a simple metamorphosis and arrival at the supreme synthesis.’” –Chardin, The Future of Man, p. 127, in Harper’s, December 1971: 77-78)

GRATEFUL NOMINATION

MY OWN ZODIACS

I am always amazed at the evolution of recognition and belief in the philosophies of individuals who seek to share higher understanding. I truly appreciated your inclusion of Clarke’s statement with regards to the elderly statesman and the probability of what can or cannot be done. 🙂

Cosmology is not the easiest of the aspects of philosophy. Imagine me/us in the seminary studying matter and form and stuff IN LATIN! I would guess you did well in the course anyhow. It is sometimes “dreamy” stuff: puts one to sleep, perchance to dream. And then we have Childhood’s End. If there is HOPE, it is that MAN is the missing link–and that this too will pass.